RedDoorz gets $70M in fresh round of funding

The investment is part of a larger Series-C round and while company executives declined to specify the exact size of the ongoing capital raising round, it is expected to cross $100 million.Biswarup Gooptu | ETtech | Updated: August 19, 2019, 08:46 IST

RedDoorz, the hotel management and booking platform founded by two former MakeMyTrip senior executives, has raised $70 million in its latest round of funding, led by Asia Partners, Rakuten Capital and Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund.

The investment is part of a larger Series-C round and while company executives declined to specify the exact size of the ongoing capital raising round, it is expected to cross $100 million. The latest capital infusion also comes about a month after RedDoorz raised $45 million in its Series-B round that was led by Chinese investment firm Qiming Venture Partners in July.

"If you look at the track record of the folks we have brought on board this time round, they are all investors who can undertake follow on investments through a much larger stage of the company. They are extremely savvy, well-connected and aggressive investors," Amit Saberwal, chief executive of RedDoorz, told ET.

Asia Partners is the new Singapore-based investment firm cofounded by Oliver Rippel, who was formerly with South African strategic investment giant Naspers, known for his prescient bet on Flipkart, India's largest online retailer, and led the Johannesburg-listed company's investments in the Walmart-owned company.

"Our mission is to help build and mentor Southeast Asia's next generation of tech unicorns. Our team has a unique combination of investing and operating skills to help companies such as RedDoorz become true market leaders," Rippel said in a statement.

The latest set of investors have invested more than $60 million in the latest round, with two of its existing institutional backers - International Finance Corp, the private investment arm of the World Bank, and Qiming Ventures - putting in the rest. Till date, the company has raised about $140 million in equity financing. Singapore-based RedDoorz, which competes with the likes of SoftBank-backed Oyo Hotels & Homes and Zen Rooms in the lucrative South East Asian market, was founded by Saberwal and Saxena in 2015, and operates across Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, apart from its home market.

"The plan is to go deeper into the markets in which we currently operate. South East is our playground. In terms of accommodation, it is three times the size of India, and so we believe, we have just scratched the surface of the market," Saberwal said.

Saberwal, who played a leading role in setting up India's leading online travel aggregator MakeMyTrip's hotels business, led the Nasdaq-listed company's international expansion, before setting up RedDoorz four years ago.

Saxena, who was also previously with MakeMyTrip and is currently the chief technology officer at RedDoorz, is based in Noida, where the company has its technology centre. It is looking to building a second technology hub in Vietnam.

The company, which operates across over 80 cities in the region with over 1,400 properties, is targeting having over 2,000 listings by the end of the current calendar year.

"Our format is the 7-11 format, and we want a RedDoorz at every single street corner, and we want to do it in a manner where we cover all addressable cities. The idea is to increase our coverage and density," Saberwal said.